San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
What serving on a jury taught me
Like many people, I’ve long lived under the assumption that jury duty is a pox to be avoided. Year after year, I have sat in bleak courthouse basements after a summons — only to be sent home after a wasted day.
Earlier this month, however, I was finally called up to the big leagues, and empaneled on my first jury. At a time when issues of crime and justice are at the top of everyone’s mind in San Francisco, I found the experience enlightening — far different from the trials I have covered as a journalist. Perhaps most heartening was the fact that my fellow jurors were all thoughtful, capable people who loved San Francisco and believed in the impartial assumption of innocence and accountability for those proved to deserve it.
Our case seemed cut and dry at first. Here’s what happened:
Around 2:30 a.m., two California Highway Patrol officers pulled a car over on the shoulder of the exit ramp to Treasure Island. As officers spoke to the driver, another car pulled up next to them, blocking the ramp. An additional car then showed up and was unable to pass.
A strange situation was brewing. Police don’t like that.
One of the officers broke off to investigate the car that was blocking traffic. Its driver claimed the car behind it was acting suspiciously. When the officer then approached the rear car, that driver appeared to be hammered — as did everyone else in the vehicle.
The officers finished their original investigation and then put the driver of the rear car through a series of sobriety tests. He failed miserably. A breathalyzer test showed his blood alcohol content to be around .2%, more than twice the legal limit.
Case closed for a DUI? Not exactly.
On the final day of our trial, the defendant took the stand and testified that, yes, he was in the driver’s seat when officers confronted him. And, yes, he had been drinking. But he switched seats with the real driver as they waited for officers to approach. He never
actually drove. The law says that you must move the vehicle to be driving under the influence.
It was a dramatic twist. But as absurd as it sounded, I would later learn that this is a common defense in drunk driving cases — one that police and prosecutors should have been prepared for. They weren’t.
Here’s what happened next, and what the experience taught me about our criminal justice system.
Police paperwork is essential:
Most of us want cops out on patrol, intervening in crimes and making residents feel safe. This is certainly important. But officers are also investigators who must compile evidence and testify in court before a jury. That demands comprehensive and accurate paperwork, without which even the most dead-to-rights cases can collapse.
That’s what nearly happened here.
Like many trials, ours took place over a year after the crime in question occurred. When the officer who testified in our trial took the stand, she reasonably said that it was impossible for her to recall exact details of the incident from memory alone. She had been involved in hundreds of
other drunk driving arrests since she apprehended our defendant. So, she used her police report from the night in question to inform her testimony.
We jurors then had to rely almost exclusively on that testimony to determine if the defendant was guilty.
The officer testified that she spent five hours on paperwork for this DUI, which sounds outrageous. Yet while she thoroughly documented the defendant’s sobriety — or lack thereof — her reporting failed to establish a timeline
nd of when the defendant’s car arrived at the scene and when her partner first approached the vehicle.
The defendant was clearly drunk. But absent a firm timeline, the prosecution couldn’t definitively prove that a switcharoo was impossible. We jurors were left with a judgment call on whether the police or the defendant was telling the truth about who was driving that night.
Ultimately, we believed the police because of inconsistencies in the defendant’s testimony. But a different jury might have seized upon the missing timeline to acquit.
In recent months, San Francisco Mayor London Breed has insisted that she wants police officers on city streets,
not at their desks doing paperwork. San Francisco residents affirmed this desire when they passed Proposition E in the March election, which promised to cap paperwork at no more than 20% of an officer’s job.
I can’t say how much of the paperwork San Francisco police fill out is or isn’t superfluous. But serving on a jury did illuminate to me why rigorous written reports are essential. We dismiss their importance at our peril.
Technology can be unreliable:
California Highway Patrol vehicles are equipped with microphones and cameras. Officers also wear microphones to capture conversations when they exit the vehicle.
This invites the question: Do we still need old-school police reports in the age of video?
Yes.
On the night of the DUI in our case, police microphones malfunctioned; none of the conversations officers had with the defendant was recorded. Meanwhile, cameras were positioned only at the front of the patrol car. Police interactions with the defendant happened in the rearview.
The officer testified that these kinds of glitches happened all the time. Ultimately, members of our jury believed her. Another jury might have found these errors suspicious.
Technology can be a useful investigatory tool. But it can also backfire.
Credibility matters: Criminal trials are acts of theater performed to win over a jury.
Our jury found the defendant guilty of DUI because we believed the officer’s story to be more credible than his. Frankly, I was shocked the trial came down to this. I went in expecting a higher level of rigor in the prosecution of the case.
If the defense had shown us evidence that the officer had a history of lying or misconduct — with all other facts being exactly the same — we would almost certainly have reached a different outcome.
Credibility matters in our justice system.
And yet so many incidents we hear about in California put to question the credibility of police in a way that makes good cops’ jobs difficult.
Consider the recent case of police in Marin County who tased a man who was suffering a seizure in his own home. Officers are accused of fabricating charges against the stricken man to justify this use of force. The local chief is backing his officers despite clear video evidence that forced the local district attorney to throw out the dubious charges.
Meanwhile, a Chronicle investigation found that even as California moves to decertify thousands of police officers accused of misconduct, records of that misconduct too often remain sealed — meaning bad cops can potentially jump to a new department.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned from my jury duty experience is that trust is the foundation of our criminal justice system. In order to convict, juries need to trust that the testimony police present on the witness stand is honest and true. If that trust breaks down, so will our justice system.